(8) Crucia

Corinth is a city built along the lines of madness, its structures crammed together between disorienting streets that even a minotaur would get lost in.

On that afternoon it seemed that everyone just had to be outside, an ant colony gone wild, but this was a good thing. There is safety in crowds. Sally Anne immersed herself in the throng, sniffing the salt in the breeze that told her the direction she should go to reach the highway to the grape growers villas northeast of the city proper.

She came to Poseidonos Road, where, across the street, there were public basketball courts, fig and palm trees, along the narrow strip of deserted beach. To her right was a small and rather dingy coffee shop, Il Tramonto.

She went in and ordered an espresso from a man behind the counter who looked like an animated corpse. She took her china cup to a tiny tile-top table in the dimmest corner and composed an email to Rolgo at his e-address at the University of Peloponnese, the Corinthian campus, called the School of Social Sciences. It would be automatically forwarded to his personal email address.

She wrote: 'Dear Professor, I have an idea for a social study of clientele at a coffee shop, in particular the Il Tramonto on Poseidonos, the highway that follows the coast. If this idea is acceptable, please favor me with an immediate response. Sincerely, Brenda Anne Sern.'

Then she waited. She ordered a croissant with cream cheese. An hour later, still waiting, she had a creme de menthe and a raisin cookie the size of a saucer. Her nerves were taut and her forehead damp.

Sanguineus stopped a passerby near the coffee shop, a short squat man wearing an Aloha shirt.

"I'm looking for a young woman," he said to him in Greek, "about a hundred and seventy-five centimeters, thin, with fairly short blond hair. Have you seen such a person?"

"Sygnomi ochi," ('Sorry, no') the man said, shaking his head.

Sanguineus nodded and stepped back into the alley that bordered the Tramonto. He asked the same question of two other men that came by, with negative results. The odds were decidedly against him, but he always gave it a try in situations like this, on the off-chance that he would detect the pursuer. There was no other explanation for the email Sally Anne Bern sent to Rolgo. She had been in a spot of trouble shortly after her arrival and was now on the run. Sanguineus could stand sentry at the coffee shop where she was holed up while at the same time seek the elusive butterfly of fortune.

This time luck smiled upon him.

"Have you seen such a person?"

The sloppily dressed man had a red face from walking hastily. He had been coming up the alley with an expression of almost frantic worry. When asked the question his pupils dilated. The signs were of a textbook quality: guilt and the anxiety associated with a blown cover, an unmasking.

Darren's reflex was to reach into his coat pocket for the Luger. But Sanguineus knew all about reflex actions. The suppressor-equipped Glock was shoved into the soft gut before the shaky hand reached the pocket.

"Kratiste ta cheria sas--" ('Keep your hands--') Sanguineus began to say, when the dismayed thug interrupted him.

"I don't understand Greek too well."

"Keep your hands to your sides, turn around, and walk to that grey Renault."

Darren walked the short distance to the car parked alongside the trash bins at the back of the shop. Every ounce of his consciousness was wrapped around the Luger, except for a pinch of metaphysical molecules lingering around his flat-handled throwing knife concealed by his left sock and trouser hem.

"Go around behind the trash cans and-- No. Stop," Sanguineus hissed, seeing a bus boy in a dirty apron come out from the back door with a plastic bag.

The boy glanced at the profile of Darren and then at the cold menacing eyes of Sanguineus. The eyes told him to mind his own goddamn business or else.

The boy tossed the bag in a bin behind a board fence, brushed his hands on his black jeans, and went back inside.

Darren knew the routine. He went behind the fence and lay spread-eagled on his stomach. The quick patdown produced the Luger and knife, plus a knuckle duster and a ten-inch blackjack.

"Get in the passenger seat."

Ten minutes later a tall man in a grey T-shirt, black leather jacket and black sockcap, blue jeans and brown camo boots, came up to Sally Anne's table.

His dark blue eyes roamed the room, and his mouth, framed by a grey-streaked black goatee, was as firm and grim as a dagger hilt.

He looked at her and said, "Rolgo sent me. You'll have to sit in the back seat."

He turned and she went with him to the Renault, her heart racing ahead of her thoughts. This, she knew, was Sanguineus.

He took the Poseidonos highway north along the coast as she sat in the cramped back seat smelling an odor that grew more unpleasant as the minutes passed.

"How were you pinched?" he asked.

"That guy followed me to my rental car at the post office. I'm not very good at Disarming and Decomission. So I decided on Passive Response."

"Let me know if any of this is wrong. You met a man with a white crewcut and white mustache who interrogated you about my assignment. He knows of the friendship between Rolgo and Grigoris Markos. He didn't mention the name Tragos. You told him about me, about ICS, about our client, and that the target is Berenice Chora. You escaped through a window when Christofer Agapi and his thug went out of the room to discuss the matter. This was at an auto repair and body shop, next to a pharmacy on Korinthou Street."

"That's right. But I didn't see a pharmacy. Did I fuck things up?"

"Shit happens. But I got lucky. This Darren Smirnis--" Sanguineus glanced at the doubled-over corpse with its coat draped over it. "--He recorded on my phone some valuable info before I popped him."

The Renault turned up a gravel road. "Sometimes we can take advantage of the enemy that thinks it knows the score, provided we know that THEY know."

"So, I'm not in trouble?"

"I didn't say that."

Sally Anne shuddered. "Where are we going? To the villa?"

"You're my girlfriend, a veterinarian assistant, crazy about horses. You want to see Ambrosia Kastri's award-winning horse that you've heard me talk about. Act shy and modest, and a little stupid. Let me lead the conversation."

He glanced back at her. "You swing this, and I'll see you're let off the hook for screwing up the protocol."

"But Christofer Agape knows about me. Won't Ambrosia be wise to us? And apparently Agape has Berenice Chora and she's alive. That's what wasn't in the report. I was to tell you that in person. She and her little daughter, Fabienne. Agape is a father figure to them both."

Sanguineus nodded. He said with a trace of impatience, "Try to remember your classes on Logic and Criminal Psychology. I have a tight cover through Universal Wineries. You're my girlfriend with veterinary credentials. If Ambrosia gets wise, it will be you she's suspicious of, not me, if I play my role convincingly. That means confessing that you're a PI operative involved in the Tragos case. It will come across as a fait accompli, a situation that I was not aware of but will have to live with. The supposed target is Berenice, thanks to your quick thinking at the repair shop. Ambrosia might be a little disturbed about the contract on Berenice, but I doubt it. She'll be glad that the red finger isn't pointing at her. Let me and Rolgo handle Agape if he shows up."

"Oh. Okay." She settled back in the seat and smiled at the houses and the strips of vineyards and olive groves. She didn't wonder about the problem of disposing of Darren Smirnis. She was well-versed about such contingencies. More than likely the Kastri estate had a large incinerator for the disposal of dead branches tractored in and dumped in a furnace funnel bin, such as she had seen in the training films about body disintegration in rural areas.

"Rolgo will meet you out front of the villa, where I'll drop you off," Sanguineus said as he turned into the drive. "I have a date with an auto wrecker. Tell Rolgo confidentially that I'll be with the foreman's ex-assistant, concerning the body."

"What's the name of the veterinary clinic I supposedly work at?"

"Rolgo will explain all that. He has your clinic ID card."

The foul-smelling Renault slowed to a stop in front of a pair of lofty cypresses. The trees flanked a flagstone walkway on which Rolgo waited, smoking a pipe.

He seemed quite at ease as he knocked the clump of ashes from his pipe bowl against the trunk of a cypress, his horn rim glasses glinting in the slanting light from a low reddish sun.